Terror food

I'm a suicide cook.


(and yes, I know that they announced by now that bean sprouts are safe to eat, but
I wasn't worried anyway. This pic was from my meal yesterday.)

Play with your food

My snacks are frustrating me.

Food photos

I'm still very busy with the commercial assignment for a big food company. I have several
dishes in my illustration that need to look extra tasty, so yesterday I visited a professional
food photography studio, to photograph some meals with my little paper figures next to it.
It was really interesting to watch the whole process!

The cook is busy putting an egg into the right position. It took four eggs to get a perfect
one for the pic.
At the right there's the whole set up for the tiny plate.

Are these the tools of a cook or a surgeon?!
It took us four hours to get the right pic of two sandwiches, and I didn't get lunch. X-(
(the sandwiches for the shoot were only supposed to LOOK tasty, we couldn't eat them)

Meri kurisumasu!

My home made Christmas dinner!

Playing with my food

I had been browsing through the lovely blog from Anna The Red about decorated bento
(Japanese lunch box) and when I saw a tutorial for mushrooms made from radish, I just had
to try and make them myself. And then decided to make a whole charaben (character bento)
style dinner!
I didn't have any plan when I started (besides the mushrooms), and I ended up with this.

Some kind of ehm... monster? Insect? My subconscious must have a creepy side.

The ingredients are rice, radish, avocado, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber, a pickle, sardines,
pickled haring (rolmops), and little bit nori (seaweed). Topped with wasabi flavoured sesame
seeds and soy sauce mixed with wasabi and vinegar.
And it was really delicious if I say so myself! Rolmops tastes so good with Japanese food!

My mushrooms weren't as pretty by far as the ones from Anna The Red but I guess practice makes
perfect. In retrospect they looked kinda weird anyway next to the monster.

For some reason my boyfriend and I ate the head last and both ended up with the eye.

Naha creatures

Even in Asia I'm searching for my roots, so I was happy to find THE European
jasmine tea, and look at that! It even has EUROPEAN AROMA! :-P
And then I also found CHEESE icecream! It's got to be Dutch because it has a windmill,
wooden shoes and ehm... a German hunter hat (whatever). As a true Dutch I was of
course appaled by the idea of cheese turned into ice. But to my surprise it tasted actually
pretty good! (the text says 'Cheese Mochi' (mochi is soft rice 'cake').

View from Shuri castle over Naha (Okinawa). We had rain today.
The real bird that is sitting there, is almost disappearing.
Can you tell I'm getting influenced by Japan?

Frog dish

A green 'hot pot' restaurant in Hualien.
(no, we didn't eat frogs or flies, but fish and beef noodle soup)

Taiwanese sushi

No, I haven't been lazy with drawing. I've just been stuck in a hotel without
internet connection for my notebook. But now I'm in a new hotel and back in
business! Here I am with the mascot of the Sushi Express in Ximen, Taipei.

Our first dinner in Taiwan, because I love sushi and because it's so
convenient (no Chinese menus to be deciphered).

Off we are!

Taxes are done, work is finished, bags are packed, A. is house sitting, off we go!

And just 11 hours later we're in Hong Kong.
(view from our hotelroom, plus first try-out with my new wacom tablet)

Weird chips I found so far:

-Cuttlefish : Fishy smell, very light squid taste. Not that special.
-Green Pea : Cute, in the shape of green peas! (=Japanse beer snack) Nice taste, I like it!
-Crab temaki : WTF?! Potato chips with sushi taste?! Taste is very undefined, a bit creamy....

Mamewashiba

Just discovered the crazy Mameshiba (thanks Irene!), a set of dog faced beans that
pop up in your food and bother you with upsetting trivia. Still they're really cute.

But I knew I shouldn't have bought wasabi flavoured peanuts after seeing that....

Happy kitchen

I like my kitchen and my kitchen likes me.

In the pics:
-Barbapapa shampoo dispenser, now used for washing up liquid
-Japanese spoons, sponges and cups
-'No Food' sign from Hong Kong
-I put loose spice bags and garlic in the box with the poison sticker.
(I feel like a witch when I'm cooking. ;-) )

Cookie, cookie, cookie chameleoooon

(quote from 'the Fast Show')

Heeeere cherry, cherry!

Fruits & flies

I don't own a fruit bowl, so I always place fruit on the table in a decorative way.